current artists in residence

2017 - 2018 Foundation Residents

Emily Connell

Artist, Emily Connell, creates her work through a variety of media including ceramics, video, photography, and performance to name a few. Her unique background informs her work, which walks a line between two spiritual extremes. She has had the opportunity to work on her artwork at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snow Mass, Colorado and the International Ceramics Studio in Kecskemet, Hungary. She has been published in numerous local papers as well as Ceramics Monthly magazine, and exhibited nationally including the Houston Center for Contemporary Crafts. In 2012, Connell was awarded the Regina Brown Fellowship to research Catholic processions in Italy during the spring of 2013. She has served as a Ceramics Instructional Assistant to George Timock at the Kansas City Art Institute and a 2012-2013 Charlotte Street Foundation Urban Culture Project Studio Resident.Emily Connell received her BFA degree in ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute, and is currently a resident artist at the Kunstraum KC in Kansas City, Missouri.

Kelly Lynn Daniels

Kelly Lynn Daniels is a ceramic artist living in New Bedford, MA. A native of California, she moved in 2013 to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in ceramics at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth which she received in May 2016. She will be a Foundation Resident at Belger Crane Yard/Red Star Studios in Kansas City, MO beginning fall 2016. Kelly was a professional potter for ten years before returning to California State University Chico where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics in 2011. She has exhibited her work in numerous shows and has work in many private collections. In 2015 she was the summer artist in residence at Arch Contemporary Ceramics in Tiverton, RI. Kelly has received a number of scholarships, fellowships and assistantships for her studies which have included those at Penland School of Crafts, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. When Kelly isn’t working in clay she can be found playing with her cats, strolling along the beach, hiking through the woods, or knee deep in her vegetable and flower garden.

Wen Dan Lin

Wen-Dan Lin was born and raised in Taiwan. He received his BFA from Kansas City Art Institute in 2011 and received his MFA in Ceramics from Arizona State University in 2015. He had won many awards including the Zahner Art and Sculpture Competition where he had has sculpture enlarged and fabricated by architecture firm Zahner. He has exhibited nationally and is currently a resident artist at the Red Star Studios in Kansas City.

Rachel O'Flannagan

RAOstudio began January 2014 in Manhattan, Kansas and is now located in Kansas City, Missouri.

“Each piece I create is hand-crafted with a heavy influence of both mod designs and geometric patterns. I strive to create pieces that people want in their homes, inside their cupboards, on their coffee tables, and in their lives. I want my work to serve a purpose–to form a bond with its owner and be used. Turning a ball of raw clay into a functional object that not only serves a purpose to someone, but is appreciated and cherished is my goal.”

Sarah Jewell Olsen

I am currently a Red Star Foundation Artist In Residence at Belger Crane Yard Studios (Formally Red Star Studios) in Kansas City, Missouri. I am a potter with a design aesthetic. Through thoughtful craftsmanship, I intend to communicate the importance, permanence, and necessity of my pots. I use porcelain to throw and hand build shapes that are informed by facets of design, historical ornamentation, and Modernism. Practical beauty is conveyed through the articulation of curves and edges that create the forms and adorn their surfaces. I am drawn to the dynamic form change that occurs when a graceful curve moves around a pot and into an edge.